Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store
First Look: Trip Cubby for iPhone
Do you spend more time in your car than you spend at home? If so, you're probably a road warrior driving around for your business. If that's the case, a good mileage log is exactly what you need. With gas prices still in the $4/gallon range, making sure you track your work or charitable miles accurately is very important.Trip Cubby (App Store link) is a mileage log on steroids. It has a well thought out interface giving you the flexibility to put in as much detail as you need about trips. When you launch the $9.99 app, you're greeted with a simple list of trips and the option to add a new trip. It's then that the power of this app shows up, since the amount of information you can capture about a trip is very complete and customizable.
If you need to supply a trip log to your accountant, Trip Cubby not only creates a comma-delimited (CSV) file, but opens an email view so you can send it to someone. Developer David Barnard notes that they're working on an online backup system for Trip Cubby and other apps by App Cubby so your iTunes backup doesn't "lose" your info. Check out the gallery for more screenshots of Trip Cubby.
Gallery: TripCubby
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
woodcheese said 10:19AM on 8-16-2008
I'm still waiting for a somewhat automated way to track mileage for business travel (wanting such a solution before the iPhone / for years)...
..I'm kind of amazed there hasn't been some sort of after market product built for the car yet. And now that the 3G has GPS it seems within reach but still no one has created or discussed such a solution that I'm aware of.
I picture launching said app, initiating "new trip" button, GPS auto-magically starts tracking your distance, every stop indexed with a press of a button for later processing. At the end of the day, or when you find some free time, you can review and fill in more detailed info regarding your starts and stops, add notes and/or tag and file appropriately. Perhaps after connecting to your computer, having a desktop client kicking out a travel log for your taxes.
Does this seem appealing to anyone other than me? Tracking mileage is mundane and tedious and seems to be the perfect candidate out of our various daily tasks for automation, now more than ever with the 3G's GPS capabilities.
Perhaps I'm missing something within the SDK that would limit such functionality but in the meantime, I will continue to wish for what I see as a great use of the iPhone.
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Simon said 11:39AM on 8-16-2008
See the description of app cubby in the app store for GPS
woodcheese said 12:11PM on 8-16-2008
Awesome. Thanks for pushing me to click that app store link...my growing laziness fueled by my expectations not being met must have been the culprit...the description of this app reads almost like an exact reply to my above post.
This is great to find. Thanks for the reply.
App Cubby Team said 6:07PM on 8-16-2008
We are working on implementing GPS, but it's a bit more complicated than it first seems. Many people will be on the phone, receiving text messages, or using other apps off and on during a day of business. Every time that happened, the GPS data would be interrupted until you launched Trip Cubby again. If you took a phone call at one stop, then forgot to launch the app again, you'd have a huge gap in data.
One of the ways we hope to solve this issue is with the push notification services that will be added to the iPhone 2.1 software in the fall.
If you'd like to help us work on this feature, we've started a topic in our forum to discuss how it will be implemented: http://www.appcubby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5
JRBTempe said 1:15PM on 8-16-2008
Damn you, TUAW! You guys keep alerting me to great software that I somehow missed, which keeps draining my bank account. LOL
Anyway, thanks... this is exactly what I've been looking for and somehow I missed it on the App Store. Keep the great discoveries coming!
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App Cubby Team said 6:07PM on 8-16-2008
@JRBTempe You didn't miss Trip Cubby, it just launched. Even though the publish date says August 2nd, it was actually released on the 14th. Apple said they would correct this, but it may take some time since they are still completely overwhelmed.
Luigi193 said 10:19PM on 8-16-2008
We are at $3.79 a gallon in VT
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Brian Peat said 11:31PM on 8-16-2008
I bought this app today JUST because of this review. I then went to their forums and started posting ideas. I'm totally loving this app. It has a few things I'd like to see changed (like a preference to change the time stamp minute increments to 15 or 30 as I don't want to flick through all those minutes just to use larger increments).
I waited and and didn't buy the two other big mileage apps hoping someone would nail it, and this one did.
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Paul said 5:46AM on 8-18-2008
You think you guys have it bad in America - at current rates here in the UK we are paying the equivalent of USD$11.52 a Gallon !!!!!!
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Francesco Caporusso said 9:10AM on 8-18-2008
This looks like a good app.
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